The classy style of Ron Franklin, ESPN’s voice for Big 12 basketball and a longtime college football announcer, will be missed by sports fans if he goes through with plans to retire when his network contract expires in April.

After 44 years in sportscasting and 22 years at ESPN, Franklin, said he’s “98.5 percent sure” he will retire after broadcasting the 2010 NIT championship.

First Munson, now Franklin. Damn, that’s sad. If the WWL has any class at all, it’ll let the man go out calling the Rose Bowl. (The televised broadcast, that is.) Not that I’m holding my breath.

If you want to know what the sound of college football is like, here’s Franklin’s introduction to the ’05 Georgia-Auburn game:

Uncle Ron, you’ll be missed. And if you ever decide you’d like to keep your hand in things by doing a little radio play-by-play, I’d be more than happy to help carry the water here with a little campaigning.

Many people think it was the Holly Rowe incident that soured ESPN on Franklin. Per Wikipedia,

On October 1, 2005, according to the Chicago Tribune, during a game between Notre Dame and Purdue that Franklin was calling, sideline reporter Holly Rowe praised Purdue defensive coordinator Brock Spack for using all three timeouts on defense despite trailing by four touchdowns late in the game. “If the coaches are giving up,” Rowe added, “what does that say to the players?” Franklin responded: “Holly, it’s not giving up. It’s 49-21, sweetheart.”

In response to that, Mo Davenport, senior coordinating producer for college football said, “It was an inappropriate comment, and we’ve communicated that to Ron. There’s never a reason to say something so mean-spirited. Ron apologized. We dealt with it internally.”

Finebaum stated twice today, once on his own show and once on anothers, that his next column was about CMR being on the ‘hot’ seat…its so hard to maintain my singular hatred of all things florida when surrounded by arrogant bamers…I don’t like Urban at all, but these bamers really believe he’s the 2nd best SEC coach behind Satan…actual history be damned. I actually like bama…when they are average (see Shula era), but with a little mo, their freakin ridiculous!

Well in that case, we can kiss Richt goodbye because as we all know Finebaum is more powerful than Damon Evans.

Bloviation for the Dawgnation

Quote Of The Day

“It brings back a great Bulldog running back in Thomas who has NFL playing experience and has had success as a college coach at multiple schools. He also inherits a position that has been built to an elite level by Bryan. And it gives Bryan the opportunity to return to coaching the position he played and the one where he cut his teeth serving as a graduate assistant under wide receiver coach John Eason here at UGA. It also provides him with a new experience as a passing game coordinator.” -- Mark Richt, AB-H, 2/16/15